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https://chromakode.com/post/slow-news/
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
I once learned the idea that if one does nothing to seek out news, the important things will find their way to you.
- This was emailed, but is worth posting here. ( See Email strands ideas )
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I got no response.
People who know you will come to you. The larger, more varied, more communicative -- the more competent -- your social network is, the more useful the information becomes.
You've put yourself into an addictive news-seeking frame of mind, but there is a passive news-receiving one. Instead of having the forward/advancing perspective, where you're challenged by fast/slow news, what if those efforts were put into researching/seeking only the topics which one finds interesting out of those already curated by your social network?
So effort becomes one of news-seeking by making communications channels higher quality, and then effective research (and the incidental discoveries that encourages).
Thin them out. Maybe unsubscribe from "big news" because the important stuff will get to you smaller/niche channels like YouTube commentary channels.. they are the sort of "craft beer" of news networks. When interesting things surface, get curious and research.
Streamline. Instead of having news trickle in as emergency notifications, slow them down by batching them. Most people have a hard time determining interest and urgency when flooded. By batching, it's easier to have a passive overview and pick an interest from a list.
Optimize social networks. For the people who are already interested in sharing with you, find a way to make them effective. Make it obvious what you do and don't want to talk about, or what would be most effective. This is probably human instinct with regular interactions, but this new fangled internet thing is a big challenge. Usually this is done by engaging the people you know with the things you yourself are interested in chatting about. They riff off of your interest (challenge, question, etc) and learn more about what you're interested in and how you share and therefore receive.
I see the problem of news as being purely a social problem. Find and curate the people who themselves have their unique news discovery systems. News then filters through and is curated by "internet-friends". The final problem is that most people live in a bubble and have no concept of, or are terrified of, being challenged and so being sheltered into only receiving that kind of gossip-news can over-filter. This is where good and open-minded research skills have to come into play. But good luck with that when the tools people use are biased or openly ideologically bigoted and deceptive.
Curated news example:
The video game Anthem revealed a sort of "permanent crunch time" developer abuse. That's not the least of the industry's problems. There are practices such as releasing unfinished games only to require a "season pass" for a roadmap of features and content which should have been in a premium-cost game right from launch, and are often made in advance and specifically withheld! Games are encouraging, leveraging and creating microtransaction addictions. Children have been using parent payment information cooked into their games to buy things. There are learning algorithms which screw with randomness to manage "player frustration" to push players into purchases. Loot boxes, being linked to gambling and being banned in some places, are now being renamed "surprise mechanics" and likened to Kinder Eggs.
If I knew what you liked, I could curate what I say. Then anything I do say I would put more effort into conveying better, How and when I say it (Email, Twitter, Discord, coffee, etc.) matters.
News slows when stepping back from pro-active news seeking into crowdsourcing and curating it.
Last updated 2023-03-18 at 22:11:47
